They answered by tightening the chains. A bloody seam opened on my breast right above my heart. So rich and sweet blood streams, alive with the salt of life and the spice of power. They suckled the air to suck me dry, to use the salt of my life to yet again chain those who served them.

Blessed Tanit! It hurt.

My soul was being torn from my body, all life and love and courage and strength pouring through the gash.

But I still had a tongue.

I still had breath.

I had a plan.

“My mortal blood I sacrifice. But only my mortal blood. You have no right or claim to my spirit blood, the blood I inherited from my sire. So if you have taken even a drop of my spirit blood, then the contract is broken.”

48

The festive cacophony twirled on unceasing as I took in a breath and let it out, as I moistened my bone-dry lips. My legs and arms trembled, but I did not fall.

The throned presences leaned forward as if suckling on a suddenly dry teat. Stretched toward me a little more, as if puzzled. Then probed with talons and knife-bladed teeth. The sharp planes of their human-like visages wrinkled as they sniffed the air, as they tugged on the chains and, in increasing frustration, shook those chains to try to force the blood to flow.

But the chains no longer bound me because there was no possible way to separate my mortal blood from my spirit blood.

“I invoke rei vindicatio.” My voice rang clear above the hissing whirl of the courts as the chains slithered off my body and wilted like withering vines on the ground. “Without my blood to seal the contract, we reclaim ownership of our own selves.”

Insubstantial chains make no sound as they shatter.

What you hear are the defiant shouts as we rise.

My sire laughed with the howl of a man who has had to keep his contempt hidden for far too long. He sprouted eru’s wings, unfurling them to their full majesty and making ready to fly. The Wild Hunt scattered with a boisterous roar, fleeing the courts.

“Sire!” I cried, although it was surely hard to hear me in the clamorous storm of its departure. “Sire! How do I get out of here? How do I get home?”

Like the ungrateful, manipulating creature he was, he flew away without a backward glance.

The plaza erupted in a blizzard of chaos. Daggers of ice burned my skin. The dais and its thrones dissolved in a shrieking wail whose punch was like a spear of thwarted greed and rage that drove me to my knees. Agony raked through my chest. But I could not faint. I could not falter.

The courts swelled like vast wings unfurling. Wave upon wave of furious beings pounded against me as storm waves thrash the shore. I drew my sword and frantically parried, deflecting their freezing bite and icy grip. But my strength was ebbing fast.

This was the one part of my plan I had been able to devise no answer for, the reason I feared I might not survive. I had thought to fight my way to the gate and through to the salt mine, where I might hope and pray to find enough water in the desert in order to live and travel a long road back to the ones I loved. But as the wrath of the courts rose like a flood tide around me, I realized I was going to drown before I could ever cut my way to the mortal world.

“Hsss! Hurry!”

A door swung open in the air above me. I shook off the bag of coins and heaved it into the coach, tossed my sword in after, and hooked an arm through the steps. Claws raked through my skirt and petticoats. Teeth fastened on my boot. I kicked until they fell back.

They were only gathering themselves for another, more ferocious assault. But the brief respite was all I needed to pull myself up, roll inside, and slam shut the door.

Gale winds tossed the coach up and down and sideways as it bucketed away from the palace. Where we went I did not know. I clung to my sword. The bag of coins slammed into my belly, winding me. Where the chains had bitten into me to take the first taste of my blood, my chest throbbed like fire. The pain of that wound deafened and blinded me and I just lay there panting in the hope that oblivion would claim me soon. All I could do was tighten my hand around my locket and pray that if I had just been infested with the salt plague, then the disease would consume me quickly and with less agony than this.

“Blessed Tanit,” I murmured, “please bring me home.”

My blood seeped onto the floor of the coach, moistening and melting into the coach’s substance. Blood makes the gate.

I fell through.

The goddess caught me in her arms. She cradled me like a newborn, her brown face smiling down at me. Tears wet her cheeks. A crescent moon shone above her head to light the path for those who must walk into darkness.

“Choose, little cat. For you may have peace now if you wish it.”